The Pro Bono China Outreach Project, partly funded and co-organized by local lawyer Lawrence Eustace, is looking for help from the community to safely transport computers to China.
The project—whose goal is to help alleviate poverty and disease in two small villages in eastern China—recently received an anonymous gift of 140 computer monitors, 75 hard drives, and dozens of keyboards and mice.
The equipment will be shipped to China next month to be used in schools in rural areas where many children have never seen a computer before.
Members of the pro bono team will help the teachers set up the computers and show them how to use them. “They could be great tools for teaching the kids English,” Eustace said.
In order for the computers to arrive there safely, project organizers are asking for donations of warm blankets, sweaters, pillows, socks, or other useable clothing to wrap around them when they are packed in boxes.
The donated items then could be put to use in China, unlike bubble-wrap, which is costly and has no other use.
Organizers also are asking people to donate any old but working hand tools they may have lying around.
“Hoes, shovels, saws, hammers, wrenches. Any hand tools used in carpentry, masonry, welding, plumbing, or wiring,” said Norm Becker, the project’s founder and chief organizer.
“We need any cast-off hand tools and basic equipment that all of us have squirreled away in the trunk or the garage,” he added. “These tools could have a great new life in China.”
Becker owns an engineering company in Windsor, Ont. He began investigating the possibility of sending a team of engineers to China nearly three years ago.
As reported previously in the Times, the original goal of the project was to design and set up a model drinking water system for two villages with no access to safe water.
The villages of Shiwenggou and Matoudianzi are located in Shandong province, about 600 km southeast of Beijing, one of the most poverty-stricken regions of the country.
China has a rural population of 800-900 million people, many of whom still live in 18th-century conditions. Few have electricity or access to safe drinking water.
After having visited the school and medical clinic for the two villages, it became clear the people there needed much more than clean water. The local school had no heat, and the classrooms had unsafe concrete roofs in a region known for seismic activity.
As well, the medical clinic that serves the two villages—with have a combined population of about 1,500 people—receives 30,000 visits a year and is in desperate need of basic supplies.
Becker recruited the help of Eustace, his long-time friend, as well as a team of Canadian builders, teachers, medical practitioners, students, lawyers, engineers, chiropractors, and nutritionists.
Eight teams of more than 100 people have travelled to the impoverished region in the last few years to help determine what goals should be set and how to accomplish them.
The estimated cost of the project is $1 million.
Currently, villagers must travel two hours down a trail to get water that is contaminated with animal and human waste.
The pro bono project plans to use reservoirs to capture rainwater that normally would run down the mountains and keep it in the villages. This water then will be pumped out to the fields for irrigation, using windmills.
The irrigation water should make the farmers more productive, increasing their food supply, and hopefully giving them a surplus they then can sell at the market for a profit.
For this reason, the pro bono team has decided farmers should be charged for the use of irrigation water. Money collected for the use of the irrigation system then will go towards maintaining it, thereby making the system—and the villagers—self-sufficient.
Some water from the reservoirs will be stored in secondary containers, where it will be purified for drinking and hygiene use.
This purified water will be made available at communal water stations, which each will serve 30-40 people. Each station will be equipped with a shower, toilet, and laundry tub.
Access to safe drinking water should help keep villagers healthier, and reduce the number of annual trips to the clinic.
The project has been given access to an old foundry now owned by the township. Here, they will be making pre-cast concrete for the new drinking water system as well as teach the local villagers how to make the concrete themselves.
The foundry also will be used to make piping assemblies, metal fabrication, and windmills out of old bicycle parts.
For the school, the pro bono team plans to remove the unsafe concrete roofs and put in ones with solar panels to warm the classrooms in winter. They also plan to build greenhouses on the roofs to provide another source of food.
For the clinic, Eustace and Becker already have received a large donation from a hospital in Windsor, including beds, I.V. stands, wheelchairs, and bathtubs.
The separate school board in Windsor has donated 200 desks and chairs, and eight parishes in Newfoundland are knitting hats, socks, and mittens for the children going to school.
In addition to the local donation of computers, the Atikokan Fire Department recently gave an old fire truck to the project. “It’s basically a big water tanker,” said Eustace. “We could use it to haul water up and down the mountain.”
Another recent donation came from Dr. John Ronning, a retired dentist in Illinois. He and his family have been vacationing in Rainy River District for the last 40 years and have known Eustace for some time.
When Ronning heard about the outreach project, he volunteered to sell his boat and donate the money to the project. The boat was sold through Pinewood Sports and Marine here, where Ronning kept it during the off-season.
“[Manager] Bob [Fichuk] didn’t take any commission,” Ronning said, adding all the proceeds went to the China project.
What they are in desperate need of now is hand tools.
“These people are incredibly industrious. From sunrise to sunset, they are out in the fields,” Becker said of the Chinese farmers, but added they often lack the tools necessary to work their fields.
“They really don’t have any tools of any kind,” he noted.
Eustace said while all donations are appreciated, only tools that are in working condition will be accepted.
“We’re shipping things half-way around the world and there is a cost to that,” he explained. “So we don’t want junk. It has to be useful when it gets there.”
Eustace also is looking for volunteers to help pack up the tools and computers for shipping.
All donations can be dropped off at the office of Lawrence Eustace (510 Portage Ave.) or at the home of Ray and Carol Bujold (331 Second St. E.) Their son, Mark, will be going to China next month to take part in the project.
The 21-year-old currently is studying to be a mechanical engineering technician at Confederation College in Thunder Bay.
He has worked for Eustace for the last five summers as a general labourer, doing yard work and office work. Now, Eustace will sponsor his five-week trip to China.
“If it wasn’t for Larry [Eustace], I wouldn’t be able to partake in this adventure,” Bujold enthused. “It’ll be a big eye-opener for me. I’m looking forward to it.”
Bujold decided not to tell his parents of his plans until he had worked everything out with the college. “I was waiting for confirmation from my co-op placement,” he explained.
His parents learned of his plans from another source. “We had quite a conversation the next morning,” he laughed.
Bujold will be directly involved in the work in China, and work alongside professional engineers and see the craft applied to a real project.
“We think there’s a real need for young people to see the real world,” Becker said about the project taking students to China. “They come back better citizens, and better people.”
Bujold will leave with the first working team in late October.
(Fort Frances Times)
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
